Press Releases

Made in Prague: New Czech Cinema 2014

2 – 30 November 2014: Now celebrating its 18th year, the Made in Prague film festival showcases the best of contemporary Czech cinema, featuring fiction and documentary films creatively exploring the past and present of the country through stories of resistance; love and longing; social exclusion and even sport. The 25th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution looms large in the festival programme, not just through film and documentary, but also through planned debates with filmmakers, artists, thinkers and the audience.

Celebration of Czech cinema to include eight UK
premieres

25th anniversary of Velvet Revolution to
be a major theme of festival

“Headed by this year Oscar nominee Fair Play
and Petr Vaclav´s ground breaking The Way Out, Made in Prague Festival is a
lively selection of the best Czech features and documentaries from past two
years.”

Peter
Hames, author of The Czechoslovak New Wave and Cinema of Jan Svankmajer.

The festival, organised annually
by the Czech Centre in London, starts with an evening devoted to politics in Art
and Sport featuring the UK premiere of Olga Sommerova´s documentary The Magic
Voice of a Rebel (2014) and Andrea Sedlackova´s Fair Flay (2014). The award-winning documentary film-maker Sommerova tells the story of Marta
Kubisova, the biggest Czech pop star turned dissident, who was banned from
singing after the Soviet Occupation of Czechoslovakia and made her comeback
during the Velvet Revolution.

Fair Play, the Czech Republic´s
entry for Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, depicts the fallout after
talented young sprinter Anna is selected for the national athletic team and a
secret state doping programme. Director Andrea
Sedlackova, who herself opted for artistic and personal integrity when she
emigrated to France in the ‘80s, will discuss ethics in sport and art with Pat Butcher, former athletics correspondent for
the Financial Times and The Times.

Running throughout the
festival is the theme of the Velvet Revolution’s legacy. Celebrating the 25th
anniversary of the peaceful resolution of the heady political events in
November 1989, Made in Prague features a definitive portrait of the man behind
it in Pavel Koutecky’s time-lapse documentary Citizen Havel
(2008). Following the playwright,
dissident, revolutionary leader and president
for nearly 15 years, the filmmaker provides an intimate view of a man
thrust into the spotlight, balancing public and personal life. In complete
contrast, the documentary Velvet Terrorists (2013) by Peter
Kerekes, Pavol Pekarcik and Ivan Ostrochovsky portrays three men who took up
arms against communism and were jailed for it.

Fair Play

Velvet Terrorists

Exploring the theme of
social exclusion is the winning documentary from the Jihlava International
Documentary Festival: Petr Hatle’s The Great Night (2013). A visually
impressive collage presents stories of supermarket cashiers and bar regulars,
people who live by night and are driven by insomnia, escapism and crime. The Great Night is complemented by The
Way Out (2014),the story of a
Roma woman trapped in anti-gypsy prejudice and her own community’s entrenched behaviour.
The first Czech film screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 16 years it depicts
the daily struggle to survive and better one’s life against the odds. The award-winning
director Petr Vaclav will participate
in a discussion after the screening.

The translation of
theatre into film and vice versa is the focus of a theatre and film-themed double
bill consisting of Jan Hrebejk’s Garbage, the City and Death (2012) and
Miroslav Krobot’s debut Nowhere in Moravia (2014). Hrebejk, a prolific director best known for
his Oscar nominated Divided We Fall,
captures a cult theatre production by the Prague Comedy Theatre based on
Fassbinder‘s scandalous play. Miroslav Krobot, an actor (the lead in Bela
Tarr’s The Man from London) and an award-winning Czech theatre director who has, under his 18-year
leadership, developed the Prague Dejvice Theatre into a theatre phenomenon,
will discuss his work in theatre and film following the UK premiere of his
darkly humorous film. Performed by actors from his theatre, the piece captures eccentric
characters living isolated lives in a forgotten place of grim beauty.

Nowhere in Moravia

The Way Out

Also
part of the festival is Jan Hrebejk’s Honeymoon(2013), the final instalment of his loose trilogy on buried
secrets and the possibility of forgiveness which this time comes into play when
an uninvited guest gate crashes the fairy-tale wedding of Radim and Tereza and
starts questioning Radim’s past. Czech film star Anna Geislerova (Tereza) will attend the Q&A after the
screening. As part of the 18th UK Jewish Film Festival, Czech director
Zdenek Jirasky will introduce the
screening of his film In Silence (2014), a stylized
docu-drama about the fate of five Jewish musicians, juxtaposing their
prosperous pre-war lives with the horrors of the concentration camp alleviated
by music and providing an innovative take on Holocaust themes. Family oriented
audiences will have a chance to see the charming and innovative fairy tale Lucky
Loser by Jiri Strach following the unlucky Filip on his journey to
change his fortune.

The
Made in Prague season’s special bonus is a VoD of TheGood Driver Smetana(2013) by Vit Klusak and Filip Remunda
of Czech Dream fame which will be
streamed for free.

“Made
in Prague Festival” is our annual programme highlight and I am pleased we have
put together a strong selection of films,” says Tereza Porybna, director of the
Czech Centre London. “It is the first time the main part of our festival is
hosted by the ICA and we look very much forward to welcoming our audience there.”

Czech CentreThe Czech Centre's mission is to actively promote the
Czech Republic by showcasing Czech culture in the UK. Its programme covers
visual and performing arts, film, literature, music, architecture, design and
fashion. As well as hosting its own events, the Czech Centre offers support for
other groups organising Czech related initiatives in the UK. It is a
non-political organisation supported by the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs
as part of a worldwide network of 21 Czech Centres.
The Czech Centre is a member of EUNIC (European Union National Institutes for Culture). www.czechcentre.org.uk

Made in Prague FestivalNow
in its 18th year, the Made in Prague Festival (17 Oct - 30 Nov 2014) is back
with a month-long programme of Czech cinema, music, performance and visual arts
presented across London. Cinematic highlights of the past two years are
screened at the ICA throughout November, a 6 week series of documentaries reflecting
topics of resistance, revolution and transformation will run at the Frontline
Club. Made in Prague also features dance performances (Spitfire Company at The
Place), concerts (DG307, Floex, Inner Spaces) and exhibitions (K: Kafka in Komics
at the Goethe-Institut).